The Modern Virtual Desktop

This podcast series is all about keeping you up to date with the trends we are seeing in the IT and business technology space. 

We’re here to educate you on everything they need to know from a business technology perspective and provide a better understanding on how IT and technology can have a positive impact on your business.

In this episode we aim to answer all the question you have. 

•  What is a Virtual Desktop ?
•  What makes our offering different? 
• Why do I need a Virtual Desktop?
• The benefits of Virtual Desktop Solutions?
• What are the current challenges businesses are seeing and how are we helping them overcome these challenges?
• Where are businesses going wrong?
• What mistakes we see businesses making? 
• What are the benefits the business are seeing with this? 

 And much much more! 

Thanks for listening!

Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit our website.

Transcript

Peter: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the BCN Podcast. I'm Peter Phillips and I work with businesses in helping them understand how IT and technology can better assist them with delivering on their business plans, stay ahead of the competition, and equip their staff with the necessary tools to be successful. This podcast series is all about keeping you up to date with the trends we are seeing in the IT and business technology workspace. We are here to educate you on everything that you need to know from a business technology perspective and provide a better understanding on how IT and technology can have a positive impact on your business. In this episode, we're talking about Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop Solutions and how they can help your business operate more effectively and support your distributed workforce. Today I'll be talking to Andy Stevens, head of cloud services here at BCN. Andy, welcome to today's podcast. Hi Pete, thanks for having me. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

My role as head of cloud services really is to uh help deploy and develop CMI's cloud solution, which is which is the big cloud. I've been in IT for 15 years now and really specialise in cloud services delivery. At the moment, we really heavily leverage Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Windows Desktop, and Citrix Solutions. Excellent.

Peter: 1:27

So, Andy, I guess with all these new technologies and businesses we're working with, wanting to understand more about these technologies and what they can do for their businesses. Why don't we start with the basics? Can you tell us what is exactly a virtual desktop?

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

Yeah, sure. So a virtual desktop is it's essentially a desktop PC similar to the one that you'd have on your desk, but it's delivered in a cloud solution or a hosted solution. It's not something that you can physically touch, but it is essentially the same as a desktop that you'd have on your uh on your desk.

Peter: 2:06

So if I understand this correctly, Andy, what you're basically saying is it's a a Windows PC located in a location other than your office. We're talking about Microsoft's data centers here, and you essentially connect over the internet to that PC, and you can access your data and business applications from pretty much any location from any device. Is that is that right?

SPEAKER_00: 2:32

Yeah, exactly that. You know, a virtual desktop will allow you to access your your data, your company data from anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter what machine you have on your desk. You could have a Mac on your desk, for example, where you could access it from a mobile device or a tablet, and the virtual desktop will always be the same experience across the board. You'll always get your Windows desktop there with your business apps as well.

Peter: 2:55

Businesses listening to this conversation we're having today are going to ask themselves the question why do they actually need a virtual desktop? Can you provide any clarification on what would be the motivating decision for looking at that?

SPEAKER_00: 3:11

Yeah, well, there's there's a number of reasons for wanting to have a virtual desktop or needing to have a virtual desktop as a business. I mean, one of the key things for businesses these days, especially with it being so prevalent in the in the media and everything else, is security. Now, with a virtual desktop, it essentially allows you to encapsulate all of your business needs, all of your business data and all of your company data that's confidential within a controlled environment. So you don't have to really control which endpoint the user is connecting from, which desktop they have, etc. etc. They could essentially log in from any device, but all of the data is securely stored, and you can enforce policies and security policies and things like that onto the virtual desktop itself, allowing for that kind of that corporate garden really there to be controlled centrally.

Peter: 4:01

That's really interesting. And I guess what you're basically saying is anyone with a distributed workforce, which to be honest is probably 95% of businesses these days, where you've got staff working from unsecured or unmanaged desktops or end user devices as well as home-based networks, a virtual desktop really gives the business that, as you say, secure ecosystem in which their users can operate without the business having to worry about the end user security or the device that that they're connecting from. And I guess the other key aspect and benefit to using a virtual desktop is that you can really tailor each user's hardware specifications based around their business application needs, right? So gone are the days where you necessarily have to buy a really expensive fleet of high-end laptops. Because most of the processing is done on the back end, they can get away with cheaper end user devices. Do I have that right? Would that be fair to say?

SPEAKER_00: 5:10

Yeah, that's true. I mean, with virtual desktop, you have the ability to scale devices. With Microsoft Azure, essentially the resource capacity is infinite according to Microsoft. That's Microsoft's infinite, but we can quite easily scale up. So, for example, if there's a user or a couple of users at a business that require Photoshop or they require, you know, graphic applications, then you can scale it up and give them a different machine spec to the average user, the standard user that only uses a few different business apps. And it relies less on the endpoint. There are still some things that are passed off, but you can get cheaper endpoint devices basically.

Peter: 5:52

And Andy, am I right in saying that to spin up a new virtual desktop or essentially give someone a new virtual desktop with enhanced specifications to address a specific business need, that can be done on the fly and within minutes, right?

SPEAKER_00: 6:10

It can, yeah, providing the software is installed and if we need to increase the resources, we can literally do it within minutes.

Peter: 6:17

Yeah, and that's really important these days where we've seen such issues with the supply chain of goods. We're seeing you know lead times of three, four, five months for high-end workstations and devices, which you know is really, really problematic for businesses when they try to plan or onboard new staff. So having the ability to essentially onboard or provision a new workstation within minutes is is a game changer for a lot of businesses we're working with, right? Yeah, definitely. So there's I guess many different flavors of virtual desktops or VDI or modern desktops. Tell us a little bit more about what you and your team have been working on.

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

We essentially sell a managed service called the Big Cloud. Now, what the Big Cloud is, is utilizing Microsoft Azure technology, Microsoft Windows Desktop technology, and Citrix technology. We combine all of them together to give the best experience for the end user. And it's a fully managed service for the end users. All the maintenance and everything is all done by us. They bring their data, they bring their apps, and we install them, configure them, and then we provide them with a fully managed virtual desktop essentially. They don't need to worry about the updates, they don't need to worry about getting the best performance out of it. We do all of that for them. Moving forward is we maintain the platform, we evolve the platform, we make sure that the best technology is being utilized. Citrix are constantly releasing updates, Microsoft are constantly releasing updates, new technology, and we really evaluate each piece, see if it suits our clients, if it makes the performance better, if it gives them more security, and then we'll actually retroactively go back and apply that to all of our existing clients as well, and we'll set it as a baseline moving forward. It takes the worry of Azure costs, of all the other bits and pieces that come with having a virtual desktop or having a cloud solution away from the client, and they simply pay a per user per month price.

Peter: 8:19

You touched on fixed costs per user per month, which I think is obviously important to note. Because of the way most cloud-based IaaS or SaaS-based services are built, it's all done on a consumption basis, which at times can make it extremely difficult for businesses to predict costs or fix their costs. But what we've done with some clever technology harnessing the power of Citrix and the combination of incorporating the hosting facilities with Azure, we can now deliver clients' desktops and hosting solutions at fixed predictable costs. So they don't have to worry about how much they use it. They know that at the end of the day, they are going to have a predictable bill every month. And Andy, tell us a little more around what the Citrix offering brings to the table. Because Citrix has been a best of breed, well-known, renowned, trusted vendor for many years. How is their offering complementing what Microsoft is delivering?

SPEAKER_00: 9:31

Yeah, so we've been supporting Citrix products for around 15 years now, and we've seen them change as time's gone on, and now their offering is really quite mature. They've taken all of the things that they've learned, all of the lessons learned in the last 20 years of them running virtual desktop, remote desktop kind of flavor solutions, and really taking that knowledge that they have and moving it into the Microsoft Azure, the cloud-based offerings that are available now. So, really what Citrix does is it layers on top of Microsoft Azure technologies, similar to Azure Virtual Desktop, but it really provides enhanced security, enhanced policy control, and auditability. So from an administrator side and also from a user side. So from an administrator side, every change that's made is monitored, it's logged. So we can see when changes were made, we can update servers very fast. We can essentially install applications and roll them out overnight. So we can do updates without causing any disruption to the users. What we can also do is control security policies in what they can and can't do in Citrix and in the cloud and controlling what they can and can't move to their local machine. So if we want to prevent them from copying data out of their virtual desktop, for example, onto their local machine, which is going to be a big tick for a lot of companies when it comes to security, then we can control that in Citrix policies.

Peter: 11:04

Yeah, and that's and that is so important because I think a lot of businesses have this old school misconception that if I can't see the box in the corner with my data, it's not secure. And it's quite the opposite. You know, these level three data center facilities that Microsoft offer are the best in the world in terms of security and high availability, and therefore having your data contained and stored there is really going to provide the business the best of breed in terms of security solutions. And just in terms of performance, because I know a lot of people are always skeptical as well in terms of moving data applications off-site reliant on internet connectivity. Can you tell us how Citrix has also assisted in providing enhanced capabilities for ensuring optimal performance of the platform and the user's experience when accessing their desktops?

SPEAKER_00: 12:04

Yeah, definitely. So Citrix have a proprietary protocol, which is called HDX. Now, HDX used to be called ICA, but it's essentially just a essentially a tunnel that's proprietary that they use that allows them to apply various networking sort of policies and controls and things like that to that protocol. So it's got compression built in, it's really designed to work well with limited bandwidth. So when you compare it to a traditional remote desktop session of old or a Windows AVD connection and things like that, it will use much less bandwidth, but still provide the same experience or better than a sort of traditional solution for remote desktops. And in terms of performance of the actual system, what it does is we utilize a technology called WEM. And what WEM does is monitor the systems, the virtual desktops, and it applies intelligent CPU and memory resource control. So if it sees that there is a user using a large amount of CPU or an application using a large amount of CPU, it will dynamically pin it down and stop it from affecting the other user's performance as well. So what it allows really is you can get more users per session host or per machine, and the performance is perceived by the users to be snappier because they all get their fair share and there's not someone taking up all the resources at the same time. So that combined with the way that Citrix deal with their networking traffic is really our clients have really seen a much better performance compared to traditional solutions.

Peter: 13:43

So in a nutshell, if we were to break it down into layman's terms, me traveling into the office on a train over a 4G connection could quite easily work on my desktop, very similar to what it would be in the office.

SPEAKER_00: 13:59

Yeah, exactly. And providing obviously the 4G connection is stable, it doesn't necessarily need to be fast, but as long as it's fairly stable, and if it even if it isn't stable, Citrix will deal with that in certain ways. So if you have a spotty Wi-Fi connection that drops in and out, sometimes that can be an absolute pain to deal with if you're in a traditional remote desktop solution because you'll get kicked out, you have to log back in again, you'll have to go all the way through the login process. Whereas Citrix has a technology called session reliability, and if it detects that it's going to drop the connection, it will actually freeze your session, it will pause it, and the screen will go grey. And then once the connection's restored, it comes back. You're right back to where you were again. And yes, that can be annoying, but it's also less annoying than having to restart the login process all over again. It's a much smoother solution, essentially, to deal with spotty bandwidth and you know spotty connections.

Peter: 14:52

Yeah, and and that is so important. You want to give the users a seamless experience when working. And I guess one of the other added benefits, because it's all based on Microsoft Windows technology, the look and the feel of the virtual desktop is exactly the same as a traditional Windows 10 laptop or desktop, right?

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

Yeah, exactly. Now we used to obviously use before the sort of advent of Windows 10 EVD and virtual desktops have really came into the forefront. A lot of clients will probably know, and a lot of companies will probably have some experience with remote desktop. So RDS or terminal services or some kind of flavor of server-based remote desktop, if you like. So it's kind of virtual desktop but in a server environment. Now, the problems with that were the look feel was always slightly different, and also application compatibility. So some applications they just weren't built to run on a server operating system. Now, but the fact that we're using Windows 10 means that if you have a piece of software that will run on your local machine, then 95% of them will run in the virtual desktop as well. Now, there may obviously still be some compatibility issues, but it's you get way more compatibility now with virtual desktop than you did with RDS. And it looks the same. It's the same thing, really, for the users. It's such an easy adoption for them.

Peter: 16:12

And I guess going back to the point we made earlier, right? If you're installing a piece of software or you're upgrading a piece of software that needs a little more RAM, needs a little more CPU power, traditionally it's an engineer out on site with a sticker RAM, physically installing it in the machine. Now you can literally, with a click of a button, double up the memory, add more processing power, and off the user goes without having to wait on it. And I guess it's also quite pertinent when it comes to rolling out applications across multiple machines, potentially different time zones or geographical locations. You know, an update or an upgrade across an entire estate can be done fairly seamlessly and more importantly, pretty quickly, right?

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

Yeah, well, this is one of the huge benefits of a virtual desktop solution like the big cloud, like what we do, is that you know that all of your staff have the same version of software, and there's nothing that they can do to change that. They can't install software on the system, so it's all controlled from that point of view, it's locked down. But when there is an update available, we can first of all do it during the day so there isn't any out of hours charging or anything like that. And we can make the change to the software during the day, we can deploy the changes to the master image, and then that rolls out overnight, and then you know that the next morning, all of your staff, wherever they are, they could be dotted all around the world, all around the country. And as long as they're logging into the virtual desktop, they all have that same version of software delivered to them that next morning. And that's really powerful, I think, for companies, especially companies that are sort of multinational and they've got offices here, there, everywhere, all over the world. Knowing that you can keep that software under control from a single centralized location is massive, really. I think it's a it's a huge benefit to businesses.

Peter: 18:05

So to the smaller businesses, right? I think, you know, as we said earlier, we're seeing across our client base 95% of end users we're supporting are working some sort of flexible working scheme in the sense that they're working from home or various remote locations, and therefore trying to get everyone into one location to do a system-wide upgrade is near enough impossible these days. So if you've got the technology to do that seamlessly without disrupting the users, it's really beneficial to the business. I think it'll be great to get some examples of success stories and possibly uh some stories where you've seen businesses go wrong or mistakes were made. So, do you have some time to share with us uh a particular success story where what you and the team delivered was a real game changer for a business?

SPEAKER_00: 19:02

Yeah, definitely. I I think um really the sort of mistakes and the successes they go hand in hand, really. And I think a lot of them were very heavily influenced by COVID. Now, COVID really did change the way that we work, and I think it made a lot of companies that hadn't invested in some kind of virtual desktop solution or remote access solution question why they didn't. Um I think in terms of the benefits that we've seen from businesses, we've had multiple clients now who have been quite archaic in their design, and as you said earlier, Pete, they want to see their equipment, they want to make sure that it's sitting in a corner, they know that they own it and they know it's there and they know it's safe and it's it's sitting in a room in their office. And these companies really struggled with COVID because they did have to send everyone home, but they didn't have a remote working solution set up. At that point, it was kind of they had to shoehorn something in that wasn't necessarily fit for purpose, the performance was. Wasn't very good. And it kind of made them see that a virtual desktop solution would be ideal for them. And we've had a couple of clients now on the back of COVID who have gone from that traditional in-office solution to using desktops in the office, and you can't access anything unless you're in the office kind of mentality. And they've moved to a virtual desktop solution and they're reaping the benefits now. You know, they've got staff that can permanently work from home, they know that they are secure, and they know that their business data is secure as well from any location. And that's that's really powerful, I think.

Peter: 20:39

That's really interesting, and as you say, being able to provide staff the ability to work from anywhere is so important, especially in this sort of job market as well. I know a number of businesses have been able now to tap into talent pools in different cities across the country and even in different countries uh across the world, because you can now quite easily, with very little effort, provide a working desktop to someone, irrespective of where they're based and irrespective of what device they choose to use. Which I know from my years in the IT industry, you know, having to ship desktops out to rural or faraway places and then trying to support them was a challenge in its own. So by having the option to remove the hardware reliance is quite revolutionary. Andy, it's always good to pick the experts' brains to get their opinion on where they see some of the technologies going. Have we got any sneak peeks from from Microsoft and Citrix on what's on the roadmap or on the horizon to look forward to?

SPEAKER_00: 21:57

Yeah, I think if you look at the roadmaps for Citrix and Microsoft, a lot of it is really centered around security. It's definitely one of the main buzzwords at the moment, and it's understandable why, because security is a huge issue, and the the level of attacks and things like that really are going up day by day. So, in terms of security-wise, Citrix have a few different offerings that they're bringing to the table. They have a product called Secure Private Access, which essentially allows you to secure your SaaS application. So even if you have a back office solution that is cloud-based, and you may not necessarily need a full desktop solution because all of your back office systems are all cloud-based, but you want to secure them to the same level as a virtual desktop solution, then that's what secure private access can offer. It's a single location to sign in from, it's all 2FA protected and everything like that. But then it allows you to single sign on essentially through into your SaaS applications. Now that's something that I think would appeal to a lot of businesses who may not need full virtual desktop. And also some businesses that may be hybrid. So for example, if you have an accounts department that needs Sage, which isn't online and it still needs a full virtual desktop, but that's only 10 users out of 50, then providing SPA to the other users will give them the same unified experience as the full desktop users, but they're just using Cloud SaaS apps instead. But it's the same level of security and control and it's the same look-feel. So if they do need a desktop in future, it's very easy to upscale and it's very easy to move them over.

Peter: 23:30

That's fantastic. So you can run essentially a hybrid-based setup which gives the business the flexibility of really tailoring the solution around their particular needs and wants. Because that I know has also always been a challenge where you've got always particular groups of users within a business that have different requirements from each other, and as we all know, one size doesn't fit all. So being able to offer a more personalized working offering is key. Andy, let's say we've got a potential prospect or a client who is interested in understanding more on the big cloud solution from CMI. How can we help them with this journey? What are the steps that we would typically follow?

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

To start with, we would look at them from a point of view and analyze whether or not they're suitable for virtual desktops. So a lot of the common reasons for needing a virtual desktop is if they have legacy applications. And by legacy, I mean traditional SQL back-end and SQL client-based apps, or like as I mentioned earlier, Sage, Sage 200, Sage accounts, et cetera, things like that. Basically, solutions or software rather that they would be using but isn't fully cloud-based. Now, a lot of the time businesses will come to us and they will say, We're already fully cloud-based anyway. So our line of business apps are already on the cloud. Why do we need virtual desktop? And that's all well and good, but it sometimes it takes a little bit of an analysis of their system to realize that they still have dependencies. So, yes, their line of business app may be maybe cloud-based and they may just sign into a website and they may be on Office 365, so they've got everything accessible to them. But they've got two terabytes worth of file data that is not suitable to go into SharePoint because it's a mess. And they need access to that on a day-to-day basis. So, how are you going to answer that question? How are you going to deal with that system? And really, that's where Virtual Desktop helps because we could pick up that file server and we can move it into virtual desktop without the need for VPNs, without the need for any kind of complicated access method or anything like that. And it doesn't change the way the users work. So the users are then using the system in exactly the same way, but it's far more secure, it's centrally managed, and they can access it from anywhere in the world instead of having to be in their office or within their own network, essentially.

Peter: 26:13

Andy, can you give us, in your opinion, three tips as an IT expert? What are three top tips organizations should be doing or bearing in mind on this digital transformation journey?

SPEAKER_00: 26:27

Yeah, I think one of the key things that organizations should be doing is they do need to understand the importance of IT. I think it's very easy for businesses, and we've seen this in the past, businesses don't really invest in their IT until something goes wrong. And at that point, it can almost be too late for them to reap the full benefits of a solution because everything is rushed at that point. And it may not be the right solution for them, but it's the easiest solution to get out of the issue that they're currently in. In terms of the other tips, I think one of them is also to make sure that they're thinking very seriously about security. Security is really important in the business because it's very easy, especially moving to cloud-based solutions. You know, when you're looking at Office 365 and virtual desktop and cloud SaaS applications for your line of business, you need to make sure that all of them are secured as well because they are technically accessible from anywhere. Now, we can obviously apply security policies and lockdowns to prevent that. But by default, you know, when you move to Office 365, you can log in from anywhere. And we will we will offer solutions and we will apply policies and that to prevent that from happening. But it's really a huge thing. I don't think organizations really think about it. They they think it's out of sight, out of mind, but then they will become victim to a cyber attack at that point, and then it's very difficult to recover from. So if they're moving from an old system that was built in 2010, for example, and they're moving it to a new version of the software that maybe now is cloud-based. They could save some money initially by not taking all their old data and putting it in the new system. But the problem is then that you've got an old system running old operating systems that has no support, that can't be updated, and it becomes not only a security risk, but it becomes a sort of management risk, really, essentially. You know, it's very difficult to move that into Azure sometimes, it has to be fully supported. Eventually it's going to get to a point where there's no system that can run it, and you're left with data that while you may still need to retain for legacy purposes, you can't access. Yeah, that that's really key. I think a lot of businesses do that, and it leaves a long chain of legacy issues down the line that get kicked down the road, and then they will come to the forefront eventually.

Peter: 29:11

Yeah, Andy, it's so true what you're saying there. Working with clients, one of the first things we do when we engage is put together that IT roadmap for them. I think it's so important businesses have a goal, a focus on their IT and technology going forward so that they can plan proactively for it. As you say, it's so important that businesses undertake the necessary due diligence when assessing technologies and services before they make that move, because as you say, when things are rushed, you tend to make the wrong move, and that can be so costly to the business. That brings us to the end of today's instalment. Andy, I'd like to thank you for joining us. It's been a real pleasure and insightful as always when speaking to you. Want to wish you and the team all the best, continuously updating the ever-evolving CMI Big Cloud offering. Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining us on today's podcast. If you want to find out more about us, the services, and the products that we provide, please feel free to visit our website www.bcn.co.uk. There you'll find a wealth of information and knowledge around the products and services that can help you and your business move forward. We look forward to hearing from you, and please, if you have any further questions or if you'd like to know more about the products and services we discuss on this series, don't hesitate to get in touch. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to subscribe.